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Pantilimon will stay on as City's number 2 keeper. Photo from premierleague.com.

City paid 3.5 million Euros to make the deal permanent and, according to the keeper, he will stay in Manchester “this year and the following two”. 30% of that sum should go to a third division club, Aerostar Bacau, from where Politehnica Timisoara had bought the national team player seven years ago for only 50.000 Euros. The great Gheorghe Hagi was the man who asked for the transfer to be done, the same underrated coach who insisted to play with Gabriel Torje when the current Udinese man was only 16 years old.

“I’m training and waiting for my turn”, says Pantilimon, happy enough to started in 4 games this term, 3 times in the League Cup and once in the FA Cup, keeping two clean sheets in the process (against Wolverhampton and Arsenal), but failing to help his team take out United in the FA Cup, when he was defeated three times.

Pantilimon turned 25 yesterday and contradicted his former boss, Marian Iancu, from Poli Timisoara, who had revealed that the deal was in place since day 1, but the clubs had decided to make it look like a loan in order to avoid putting too much pressure on the goalkeeper. “I knew from the start it was a permanent deal, but it wasn’t the case nor the moment to make it public. Now I can talk about it”, says the player who wants to win the Europa League and the Premier League and not talk too much about his status: “The team is all that matters.”

Radu Baicu

• 15 years of continuous work in scouting, for top clubs and companies;
• Worked for clubs like Bayer 04 Leverkusen and Hannover 96, covering the Romanian market;
• Worked for Birmingham based company ‘The Scouting Network’ (www.tsn.co.uk) as a football scout;
• Worked for Zurich based company Boutique Football as a scouting network coordinator;
• International scout for Young Boys Bern for 2 years, covering Eastern European football.
• Working for the past 5 years as an international scout for a top French club.